4 ms·

Tech employees are much more liberal than their employers (2018)

7 points by WithinReason 5y ago

logicalmonster 5y ago
I would take this kind of analysis with a very healthy grain of salt due to the following factor: political donations beyond trivial amounts are public record. Conservatives, centrists, or libertarians within many companies fear retaliation if their actual beliefs become publicly known in some circles. I find it hard to believe that the nation is roughly evenly divided politically (give or take a bit), but you can find extremely large companies that genuinely skews on the order of 99% towards one political party. It seems reasonable that there's more than one interpretation of these facts. What this data might actually be showing is if some companies like Twitter and Netflix have donations in the ~99% Democrat range, there might be an increased perception of consequences towards peoples' career within that company if they get outed as anti-leftist.
- syshum 5y ago
  The nation is REGIONALLY divided. Given that big tech is centrally located in an area that is a political mono-culture I do not find this data to be shocking
  - logicalmonster 5y ago
    If the split was around 55/45 or even 70/30 or even 80/20, you might just reasonably chalk it up to it being a blue area. But the 99% figure doesn't make a lick of sense to me as an explanation. I bet you can't even get 99% of Americans to agree that water is wet, let alone agree on politics. I would look for a deeper explanation if the data says that somewhere in the range of 99% of a large group of Americans agree on anything. My theory might be incorrect, but seems far more likely to me when you take into account human motivations.
    - kurupt213 5y ago
      The employment screening algorithms aren’t looking for talent, they are looking for a cultural fit.
      - logicalmonster 5y ago
        That’s a reasonable hypothesis as well. But if this explanation is correct, we’re being told that we’re desperately lacking diversity, and we need fresh new voices to add new ideas at the same time that hiring practices are optimizing for hiring people who have about the same outlook on the world. Having a hard time of making sense of the consistency of all of that.

7 points by WithinReason 5y ago

I would take this kind of analysis with a very healthy grain of salt due to the following factor: political donations beyond trivial amounts are public record. Conservatives, centrists, or libertarians within many companies fear retaliation if their actual beliefs become publicly known in some circles. I find it hard to believe that the nation is roughly evenly divided politically (give or take a bit), but you can find extremely large companies that genuinely skews on the order of 99% towards one political party. It seems reasonable that there's more than one interpretation of these facts. What this data might actually be showing is if some companies like Twitter and Netflix have donations in the ~99% Democrat range, there might be an increased perception of consequences towards peoples' career within that company if they get outed as anti-leftist.

syshum 5y ago
The nation is REGIONALLY divided. Given that big tech is centrally located in an area that is a political mono-culture I do not find this data to be shocking
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  If the split was around 55/45 or even 70/30 or even 80/20, you might just reasonably chalk it up to it being a blue area. But the 99% figure doesn't make a lick of sense to me as an explanation. I bet you can't even get 99% of Americans to agree that water is wet, let alone agree on politics. I would look for a deeper explanation if the data says that somewhere in the range of 99% of a large group of Americans agree on anything. My theory might be incorrect, but seems far more likely to me when you take into account human motivations.
  - kurupt213 5y ago
    The employment screening algorithms aren’t looking for talent, they are looking for a cultural fit.
    - logicalmonster 5y ago
      That’s a reasonable hypothesis as well. But if this explanation is correct, we’re being told that we’re desperately lacking diversity, and we need fresh new voices to add new ideas at the same time that hiring practices are optimizing for hiring people who have about the same outlook on the world. Having a hard time of making sense of the consistency of all of that.